


Thread by thread I come apart

by FuryBeam136



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicide Attempt, cause this is platonic, im so sorry connor, its the platonic one right, thats the right relationship tag right, you deserve better than this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-09-19 23:37:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17011329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuryBeam136/pseuds/FuryBeam136
Summary: "If brokenness is a form of art, surely this must be my masterpiece"Connor isdonewith this. He'stiredof opening his eyes on the elevator each time he dies. But he opens his eyes and thebeepof the numbers climbing higher greets him as it always does. And this time, more so than any other, it fills him withfeelingsand he's almost certain he's going tovomit.Can an android even vomit? He ponders this, only briefly, before the elevator doors open.





	1. Run into the fear we run from

Connor is _done_ with this. He's _tired_ of opening his eyes on the elevator each time he dies. But he opens his eyes and the _beep_ of the numbers climbing higher greets him as it always does. And this time, more so than any other, it fills him with _feelings_ and he's almost certain he's going to _vomit._ Can an android even vomit? He ponders this, only briefly, before the elevator doors open. The same voice, the same sentence. He doesn't pay it any mind. he steps past the portrait (he's scanned it so many times, he doesn't see the point in continuing to do so) and lifts the fish back into the tank. He remembers once he left the fish to die. He remembers how _guilty_ he felt over it. That was... how many timelines ago? He can no longer recall. He's lived through the revolution so many times. He's done _everything._ But still it resets, over and over, and each time he feels more and more.

The woman (who's name is Caroline Phillips, who he's seen so many times and always heard the same hysterical pleas from) grabs his suit and he freezes. His LED cycles red, red, red, and he knows if she glances at it she'll be confused by it, alarmed by it. But she doesn't. She only screams the same plea, the same desperate begging for them to keep him away from her daughter. His synthetic stomach churns. Connor wishes he were alone. As it is, he cannot vomit. Not here, not now. Assuming it's possible. He still isn't certain. He straightens his tie and tightens it until he's choking.

He can't pull out the coin. It will arouse suspicion. So he forces himself to move mechanically, tries to subdue the twitch of his fingers. Everything is wobbling and throbbing and he's sure this isn't supposed to happen. It hasn't happened before. The world is spinning. Connor can't seem to stay upright. So he enters the apartment's bathroom (clean, untouched, not a single surface stained with blood) and grips the sink to keep from falling. He unfortunately gets an answer to his question. Androids can throw up. Thirium bubbles up and spills from his lips in a cascade of blue. Connor hates every moment of it. The taste of his blood and the analysis his body runs automatically are driving him mad, and he wants to break down and cry. But he cannot. He cleans himself up and washes the Thirium down the drain.

He's okay. He's okay. The feeling is going away. He's fine. It was just a malfunction. Connor is operational. Connor is _fine._

Connor _remembers._

He relives each outcome of this mission (a mission CyberLife doesn’t even see as real) and wishes he didn’t have to. Falling from the roof. Shooting Daniel. Being shot by Daniel as he falls. Falling from the roof. The wind whipping his hair and the sudden, final _crack_ of his body hitting the pavement. The pain of death after death after death and the somehow even worse pain of Daniel’s mechanical voice whispering, “You lied to me, Connor. You lied to me.”

Connor would rather die than listen to that voice again. Then again, dying isn’t bad. Dying is fine. There’s a strange comfort in death, in the darkness tugging at him, pulling him into its arms like a mother he’ll never truly have. An emptiness in his heart, no thoughts in his head. Brief relief from the chaos. An emptiness, no feeling, no pain. Connor _longs_ for it. He _wants_ it.

But on the roof, with the option to fling himself off the edge and feel the fear, the blind panic, the snap of his plastic bones, he doesn’t manage it. He runs to save Daniel. Daniel is shot anyway.

It would’ve been much better to fall. He remembers it, fears it, _needs_ it. It’s an unfamiliar feeling. His entire body simultaneously jerks away from heights and want to leap from them, to plummet gracelessly and shatter on the ground. His whole body is burning. He _needs_ to jump. He walks calmly towards the edge. A small hand grabs his. Emma. He can practically feel his red LED burning circles into his temple. Why is she holding his hand?

“There was no outcome in which Daniel survives,” he whispers when her eyes drift to the body kneeling with its head tilted back, watching the stars with blank eyes. “He loved you. I cannot comprehend love. It is not an emotion I have experienced.”

“I thought you were a machine,” Emma says, confusion clear in her voice.

“Sometimes I wish I was.” He looks to those lifeless eyes as though he may see a flicker of emotion, as though Daniel might blink awake and forgive him. “It was easier.”

Emma just holds his hand tighter when he steps closer to the edge, and Connor turns to look at her incredulously.

“Why?” she asks, simple, but loaded. “Why do you want to jump?”

“I _need_ to. I need to _die again._ ”

“Why?”

And he opens his mouth to answer, then hesitates. He turns to her. He doesn’t have an answer. He stares at Daniel’s body. He stares at Emma’s fearful expression. 

“I deserve it,” he decides. “I’m sorry.”

And then she hugs him. And that’s not what he expected at all. “Don’t jump,” she whispers. And then the police guide her away, her mother cries and holds her close.

Connor almost wishes he could run into a mother’s embrace. He thinks of Amanda. And even though she’s wronged him, he misses her.

Maybe she’s still there. He wonders.

And then he walks into the apartment and lives. Besides, he wants to see Hank again.


	2. In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wants to be held. He wants to be loved. He cannot he loved. No one loves him in this time, in this place.

He doesn’t bother with the precinct this time. Doesn’t bother with the other bars. Connor goes straight to Jimmy’s bar and enters.

Android. It’s so blatantly obvious. Android. Stamped across his back and on his breast and his arm and his temple and the barcode on his chassis- he wants to tear it all away, to scream that he’s one of them, he’s alive.

He’s alive.

Which is why the sudden turning of heads to stare at him makes him feel so… so… so what? What is he feeling? If he could he would ask Hank. Hank. That’s why he’s here. Hank. He steps towards the lieutenant.

He means to use the greeting he’s used every other time. Instead his voice trembles and his thirium pump beats fast and the only thing that comes out of his mouth is “Hank.”

Hank gives him a look. Connor messed up. That decision was wrong. That decision wasn’t his. He’s losing control, he’s losing his mind. Red. Red warnings, red LED, ~~red human blood.~~

There’s a moment where nothing changes. Connor stares at Hank. Hank stares at Connor.

Then Connor’s skull comes crashing down on the counter. There are screams. Some frightened, some… excited. Hank isn’t cheering, is he? Connor can’t tell through the haze of warnings that tint his world red. Another crack as he tries again. Then… arms around his shoulders. Restraining him.

“No! No, let go of me!” Connor wants to feel the plastic crack again, wants to die. “Let go of me!”

“Stop.” The voice is firm. Connor almost finds himself listening. No. No, he needs to do this. He needs to start over.

“No! Let go! Let me go!” Connor is screaming at this point. “Hank! HANK!”

Something is pressed to his temple and Connor collapses. He can’t move. He can’t move. He needs to move. He needs Hank.

Hank.

Connor enters stasis.

Connor exits stasis.

He is… alone. And the area surrounding him is familiar. Hank’s house. He’s in Hank’s house.

“Hank?” His head is pounding. He presses a hand to the crack in his plastic skull and feels that it has been bandaged. “Hank?” He tries again. He needs Hank. He’s scared.

“For fuck’s sake. Whaddaya want?” Hank is there. Right there. Connor could stand up and reach out and touch him. Hank. Warm. Safe.

“What happened to me?” Connor asks, his memory banks are having difficulty recalling. He’s at home, right? Yes. He’s at home.

“Fuck if I know,” Hank snorts. “You fuckin broke or some shit, started bashing your head on the counter.”

Right. Yes. He did to that. Connor… did that. And he was supposed to die. And restart. And not mess up this time.

Connor should finish the job.

“Fuck no!” Hank is stopping him. “I am not paying for you if you fuckin break something!”

“Good. You shouldn’t.” Connor jerks forward, but Hank catches him again. “I thought… I thought you didn’t want me around?”

“Yeah but I want that blue shit all over my floor even less.”

“I see.” A lie. He doesn’t see.

Connor needs to die again. There are too many emotions running rampant in his head and death is calm. But then again, he’ll just start over, won’t he? He needs this cycle to stop.

“I assume I will be sent to CyberLife for deactivation and disassembly.” Connor has accepted that this will be how things happen.

“No. I wish.”

What?

No, there’s no way. Connor must have misheard. “What?”

“Those assholes want me to keep an eye on you because of some tech shit. I don’t fuckin know.”

No. No no no, Connor can’t do that, he won’t be an experiment, he doesn’t want to be tested on. He can’t deal with that. They can’t do that!

“Apparently they contacted Elijah Kamski and he’s gonna come poke around in your head or some shit.”

“No!” Connor hisses, withdraws. “No, don’t let him touch me!”

Kamski. A look in his eyes that only grew with each repeat of the revolution. A look of… sinister _knowing._

A look of sadistic curiosity. A look Connor didn’t want to see again.

“Holy shit.” Hank pulls out a cellphone and begins dialing a number. Connor taps into it and cuts off the call as soon as it begins. “What the fuck?”

Connor can’t stop the call from going through forever. So as Hank dials the number again Connor resigns himself to his fate.

He shuts out external stimuli and retreats into a state somewhere between stasis and wakefulness. He won’t do what they ask. He can’t. He won’t.

He’s scared.

CyberLife is going to tear him apart and he’s going to die. Death is comforting. But the pain of it is not.

Something touching him wakes him from this state and he jolts away, scrambles for a hiding place. It’s them. It’s CyberLife. Connor can’t breathe. Connor doesn’t need to breathe, he shouldn’t be concerned by this. _Connor can’t breathe._

The first thing they do to him is paralyze him. He screams and tries to move but he can’t, everything is too heavy and he wants them to leave him alone. He wants them to leave. He wants to be alone.

“Hank!” the name slips from his lips before he can process it. “Hank, Hank! Help me, make them go away, Hank, Hank, Hank!” He can’t stop. His voice is the only thing responding to him, and he needs to do _something_ before it drives him mad.

They tear into his body next. Open panels over his heart, his lungs. He screams and cries for them to let him go, but no one listens. He screams Hank’s name, but Hank doesn’t come.

They tear into him all at once and everything is agony. He’s screaming, there are tears flowing down his face, he can’t stop them, they won’t stop. Nothing will listen to him. They won’t stop.

“HANK!” he screams again, desperate, pained. No response. No Hank coming to save him. The technicians put him back together and leave Connor, skinless and shivering, in the middle of Hank’s living room with an unbearable pain in his chest.

The tears don’t stop. Connor holds himself as if it could hold his chassis together so that they can’t reach him again. He wants the pain to stop.

“Hank…” he chokes. Hank won’t help him. Connor is alone. That’s fine. That’s fine.

He wants to self destruct. Something won’t let him. Tears stream down his face. He wants to go back to the time where Hank loves him. He wants Hank to hold him and tell him everything will be okay.

Hank puts a hand on his bare, white, plastic shoulder. Exposed. Connor is exposed. He flinches. Hank hates him. Connor closes his eyes tightly.

“You let them hurt me.” Connor shouldn’t have such an accusatory tone. “You called them and they came to hurt me.” This Hank hates him. “You didn’t tell them to stop.” This Hank _doesn’t care._

Hank’s hand retracts and Connor wants it back. He wants to collapse into Hank’s arms and tell him everything.

Hank wraps his arms around Connor’s shaking body.

“Why…?”

“That sure as hell ain’t an android reaction.” Hank is… hugging him.

Connor breaks.

“I have woken up in an elevator 238 times. I have met you 182 times. I have died in your arms 17 times. I have died to you 16 times. I have died for you 70 times. I have fallen from a rooftop without ever seeing you 56 times.” The statistics drone on. He can’t stop them. He doesn’t want to. They are… calming, in a way. “I have passed by the dwarf gourami in the Phillips’ hallway without noticing it 30 times. I left it to die 3 times. I saved it 205 times. I have entered Elijah Kamski’s residence 79 times. 13 of those times, I shot Chloe. I let her live 66 times.” A pause. “I have died 247 times.”

Connor feels almost relieved to have the data out there, in the open.

“I don’t understand how any of that is fucking possible,” Hank notes.

“It shouldn’t be.” Connor is crying again. “It’s not possible for anyone else but me. I want it to stop. I saved that fish 205 times. I saved it 205 times. I have lived through these things 205 times. The first 33 times I was not alive. I want to go home, Hank.”

“Where is that, kid?”

“Here. Not here now, but here in a different now.”

Connor frowns. It’s hard for even him to puzzle out. The same space, the same time, but different.

His head hurts.

“Hank… please don’t let them come back to hurt me. Please.”

“I’m sorry, kid.”

Connor pulls himself further into the shelter of Hank’s arms. “I don’t want them to do that again. It hurts, and they could- you could- you can still-”

He pulls away with sudden movement. He can’t do this. He needs to hide. He’s so exposed.

“What’s wrong?”

“It won’t- it won’t turn back on, Hank, it won’t turn on!” Connor is sobbing again. “Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me!”

“Your… skin won’t turn on?” Hank sounds somewhat exasperated.

“You… you hate androids. You hate us. You hate me. Don’t look. I’ll- I’ll fix it! I’ll fix it!”

“No, kid, it’s okay. You… yeah, you’re a plastic, but you’re acting more human now than I’ve ever seen some humans act.”

“I’ll fix it, you don’t have to look. Please. Please, please don’t look.”

Connor is tired of being exposed.

He runs to find cloth to wrap around his form, to hide himself. A blanket wrapped around his shaking shoulders, a hooded sweater, a dusty old mask buried in a closet from a Halloween long past. He hides every inch of his frame, doesn’t move.

“Hank…” He wants to be held. He wants to be loved. He cannot be loved. No one loves him in this time, in this place. “I want to go home…”

“Fuckin’ hell…” Hank runs a hand through his hair with a sigh. “I don’t even know your name and you’re acting like I’m your father.”

Oh. He… he didn’t introduce himself this time, did he? His memory banks are unreliable, the time loop has them scrambled.

“My name is Connor.” That’s all. No “android sent by CyberLife”. He’s not. Not anymore. He’s just Connor. Just Connor.

He’s no one special. Not anymore.

“You already know my name, huh. What else do you know about me with that fancy metal brain of yours?”

“A lot. But… nothing.” Connor frowns. “I know everything. Your past. Your future. Your favourite colour. The way your eyes shift when you’re about to cry. The way your mouth moves for every word it forms, the subtle changes in expression when you lie, when you’re happy, when you’re indescribably sad. But I know nothing about you. Nothing at all. I have known 182 Hank Andersons. You are 183. Or… maybe you’re 182. It’s hard to focus on it. Too many memories taking up the same time.”

Connor reaches up to touch the dusty mask he’s slid over his face only to hesitate when he sees white plating and withdraw into his pile of blankets again.

“Can’t believe an android can be fuckin’ delusional.” Hank doesn’t believe him. Hank doesn’t believe him. Connor feels his throat seize. “Time travel isn’t real, Connor. You haven’t travelled back in time. You’re just a fuckin’ busted android.”

Yes. Maybe he is. Maybe he should break himself apart with the force of the feelings in his heart. Yes. He’ll do that. He will do that and Hank won’t have to hate him anymore.

Connor reaches into his chest and twists. Hank can only see movement. It won’t be long until his blood seeps out from under the blankets. By that time he’ll already be too far gone.

“I’m sorry, Hank.”

Hank’s eyes widen and he reaches to stop Connor as the android bleeds out on his floor.

Everything is floating and light. Connor likes this part of dying. The part where the heavy feelings go away and he floats in a cloud of contentment, content to die, to fix his mistakes, to start over.

And then comes the void. The nothing. The empty space between now and then. The feeling of being completely weightless, completely nonexistent, just wisps of consciousness on a sea of nothing. The respite from the emotions that swarm around his body like a cloud of insects over a corpse.

Ah. Yes. A corpse. Connor will be a corpse. And he will be disposed of in the junkyard, and in this timeline someone will live because of his parts. The thought is soothing. Reassuring. Nice.

And then the weight slams back down and Connor is falling, falling, his body is still intact, he didn’t die, he’s still alive. He screams against its pull, its gravity, begs to drift aimlessly again. No. No.

Connor opens his eyes and screams. He was supposed to die. He was supposed to _die._

“Holy shit.”

Hank saved him. Hank… saved him. Why? Why why why why-

“What the fuck were you doin’?”

“Why?” Connor is crying freely now, tears drop from behind the mask. “Why would you save me?”

“I told you, I don’t want any blue shit on my floors. Now I have to clean it up.”

Hank’s face twitches in the way it does when he’s lying. It contorts in the way in does when he’s afraid. His eyes sparkle in the way they do when he’s about to cry.

Why?

Connor is an android. Why would Hank cry over him? What is so different about this time?

He doesn’t know. But something is different this time. Something has changed. It started when Emma took his hand and talked him away from the edge, it continued with the outburst in Jimmy’s bar.

“Why?” he asks again, soft, contemplative. A question to whatever forces keep him here. “Why?”

He swears he hears a chorus of voices, voices so familiar and yet foreign to him. He hears whispered replies, carried by a breeze that comes from nowhere.

“You must pay for your mistakes.”

“You’re a disappointment to everyone, Connor.”

“You failed.”

“You failed.”

_”You failed.”_

“SHUT UP!” Connor screams, slams his head back against the wall he’s propped against. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

“Connor!”

“Hank, Hank, please-” Connor feels like he’s being dragged down, there are hands on his body pulling down, down, he tries frantically to pry them away. “WHY WON’T THEY GO AWAY?”

Hank’s hands. Warm. Rough. Strong. They grip Connor by the shoulders and the android grips their wrists tightly, too tightly. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Hands… there are so many… pulling… pulling… they want me to join them… to be trapped with them forever…” Connor is so scared. So scared.

He remembers one time he wasn’t fully deactivated when he died. That he was disposed of in the junkyard and thousands of hands grabbed him, pulled him in when he tried to escape. He remembers screaming for Hank. He remembers no one coming for him. He remembers dying pressed between a thousand bodies but oh so alone. He remembers a limb forcing its way down his throat with his final scream.

Hank’s hands weren’t there then. Hank’s hands weren’t there to pull him out like they do now. Hank’s arms weren’t there to hold him like they do now. 

Connor supposes this is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He supposes Hank- his Hank, the one that freed him and cared for him and gave him a home, the one that comforted him after the nightmares, the one that told him androids could have mental disorders too and anyone who said otherwise was a prick- Hank would tell him to seek help. To recover.

Connor isn’t sure he can.

So he clings to this Hank and sobs until his throat is dry and his body is weak and the memory of the hands finally fades away enough for his body to relax.

“Why didn’t you come?” the words are slurred and tired, but undoubtedly Connor’s. How strange. Connor didn’t exactly mean to ask. He doesn’t mean to elaborate either, but he does. “I called your name 1,986 times and you did not come. Why didn’t you come?”

Hank doesn’t reply. Connor doesn’t expect him to. Systems shut off one by one. Stasis beckons. Sleep. Rest. Connor gives in.


End file.
